Risk-Return Trade-Off on Currency Portfolios

Unconditional asset pricing models have generally found it challenging to identify evidence ofrisk aversion. This paper addresses this challenge by examining whether currency portfolios display an intertemporal risk-return relationship. We consider time-varying relations because investors' risk-aversion may change over time, based upon changing economic states. Moreover, we take into account a broad based measure of investors' expectation from a data rich environment and factor model. We identify that the relations between risk and return vary over time, and the risk-aversion parameters on momentum and value currency portfolios increased during the financial crisis. Those parameters can command both positive and negative values. Therefore traditional time-invariant models may not identify strong risk-return relations because state dependent evidence is "washed out."